WASHINGTON: Did a Pakistani intelligence official sell the information about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden to the US last year to get millions of dollars and relocate to a western country with a new non-Pakistani passport? All those seeking to know the full facts of the Osama episode are looking for an answer to this question.

President Barack Obama would not have agreed to go forward with the mission to kill Osama bin Laden had it not been for intense pressure from CIA Director Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, administration sources have revealed. The advocates of the mission had “reached a boiling point”, because President Obama, hesitated for months and kept delaying the final approval. This delay was because of a close aide who suggested that this could damage him politically.

According to these sources, Administration officials were frustrated with the president’s indecisiveness and his orders not to carry out the mission in February. President Obama was “dragged kicking and screaming” to give the green light for the operation in the last week of April. By then, the US military and other high-level officials were so determined to launch the operation that they did not want to give the president the opportunity to delay or to call it off. President Obama reluctantly approved to go forward with the operation only if the CIA head agreed to take all the blame in case the mission failed. The planning for the operation underscores the deep divisions in the Obama administration, with President Obama and a close aide, Valerie Jarrett, procrastinating on making a decision and high-ranking officials and members of the cabinet pressing him to go ahead on the other. The chief architect of the plan to “take bin Laden out” was CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, US Commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were part of the group that supported Panetta.

When asked to comment, the White House referred the question to the National Security Council. The NSC said the Department of Defence was fielding such inquiries. The Defence Department’s press office contact Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Robbins responded with this comment: “The Department of Defense is not giving out any further operational details of the mission.”

However, according to an informed official, the story that a courier helped track bin Laden is just a cover. The CIA actually learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts in August of 2010, when an informant associated with Pakistani intelligence walked into a US Embassy and claimed that bin Laden was living in a house in Abbottabad. The official, however, would not disclose whether the Embassy was located in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

After confirming that the information was somewhat accurate, the CIA set up a safe house in Abbottabad in September last year to monitor bin Laden’s compound.

As the intelligence collection proceeded, the CIA demanded that Pakistan come clean with what they knew about bin Laden, claims the official. In December of 2010, the CIA station chief’s identity was made public in the Pakistani press. The intelligence official says that the station chief’s cover was blown to retaliate against the CIA for pressing Pakistani intelligence for information about bin Laden. At the time, the speculation was that the move was in response to a civil suit accusing ISI officials of being involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Once it was clear that the information from the walk-in source was accurate, Panetta set up a reporting chain from the CIA’s Pakistan station direct to him, a highly unusual move that involved bypassing the normal official channels.

Again the US president was not informed of this progress. Meanwhile, the intelligence operatives learned that key people from an Islamic country friendly to Pakistan were sending Pakistan money to keep Osama out of sight and under virtual house arrest, claims the official.

By January of 2011 there was a high degree of certainty that bin Laden was in the house. In early February, Panetta suggested that the US should move on bin Laden. But Gates and Petraeus were determined to avoid the “boots on the ground” strategy at all costs. CIA chief Panetta was in favour of an invasion. But President Obama balked on the advice of Valerie Jarrett, a close aide.

The source maintains that Jarrett’s objection to the proposal was based on the worry that the mission could fail, further eroding Obama’s approval ratings and the strong likelihood that it would be interpreted as yet another act of aggression against the Muslims. The source explained that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played a crucial role to pressure President Obama to take action. In the last week of April, she met with White House Chief of Staff William Daley to request a meeting with the president to secure approval for the mission. Within hours, Daley called to say that Valerie Jarrett refused to allow the president to give that approval.

However, Clinton made sure that the vice president was made aware of the situation. The president was later approached by Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta and pressurised to order the mission.

Panetta was directing the operation with both his CIA operatives and the military. The plan was not to capture but to kill bin Laden on sight. Contrary to the news reports, it was Panetta and not President Obama who took the lead on coordinating the details of the mission.

According to the source, the White House staff has compromised the identity of the unit that carried out the mission. The source said the claim that the raid yielded a “treasure trove” of information about al-Qaeda is also exaggerated. Obama meanwhile is “milking” the mission as a tactic to better his chances of re-election in 2012. The concern in intelligence circles is that in his zeal to boost his approval ratings, the president is harming relations with Pakistan.

The writer is currently a freelance journalist based in Washington who has worked for foreign and Pakistani newspapers and TV channels.

However, according to an informed official, the story that a courier helped track bin Laden is just a cover. The CIA actually learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts in August of 2010, when an informant associated with Pakistani intelligence walked into a US Embassy and claimed that bin Laden was living in a house in Abbottabad. The official, however, would not disclose whether the Embassy was located in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

It's my understanding that most all of our biggest intel success resulted from "walk-in's".

I'd agree with that, JDN. I think HRC has a killer instinct and the ability to make a decision. Not that in a rational world either she of the empty suit would be in a leadership position, but I'd prefer her over O-Barry if forced to choose.

I am skeptical of that story. Could involve elements of truth and new discovery of facts but seems unlikely that they and no one else know the whole story. Let's see if the embassy snitch gets the reward.

"Clinton made sure that the vice president was made aware of the situation."

For one thing, I don't think the players on the inside would screw around much with the secrecy set up for the operation, other than Obama who has the power to declassify anything and choose who knows. Regarding the role of Valerie Jarret, I believe Obama sought political advice when he needed to sleep on it and then approved it with no operational follow up. Maybe his most trusted adviser is Jarret. I just don't believe one freelance journalist, if he knows the Pak or Afghan embassy story that is completely new, would also be first to know and tell the whole story inside the west wing story - with all the behind the scenes details.

"Too bad she's not President versus Obama...."

- Very sad that out of 300 million Americans that Obama, H.Clinton and McCain were the last 3 people standing for that position. (People, get involved earlier in the process!)

If enough people inside Pakistan knew OBL's whereabouts, how could Obama know he had months to sit still on the information and then strike with complete surprise? The CIA sets up a safe house in the neighborhood, within view(?), where home visits by military police are routine, and no one in Pakistan knew that either??...

BTW, does anyway believe that the trusted couriers were sneaking porn into the compound for themselves, without bin Laden's approval? The villains of the Batman series were more authentic than this fraudulent religious freak.

By SIOBHAN GORMAN And JULIAN E. BARNES In January, the chief of the military's elite special-operations troops accepted an unusual invitation to visit Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. There, Adm. William McRaven was shown, for the first time, photos and maps indicating the whereabouts of the world's most wanted man.

Adm. McRaven—one of the first military officers to be brought into the CIA's latest hunt for Osama bin Laden—offered a blunt assessment: Taking bin Laden's compound would be reasonably straightforward. Dealing with Pakistan would be hard.

A Wall Street Journal reconstruction of the mission planning shows that this meeting helped define a profound new strategy in the U.S. war on terror, namely the use of secret, unilateral missions powered by a militarized spy operation. The strategy reflects newfound trust between two traditionally wary groups: America's spies, and its troops.

The bin Laden strike was the strategy's "proof of concept," says one U.S. official.

Last month's military strike deep inside Pakistan is already being used by U.S. officials as a negotiating tool—akin to, don't make us do that again—with countries including Pakistan thought to harbor other terrorists. Yemen and Somalia are also potential venues, officials said, if local-government cooperation were found to be lacking.

The new U.S. strategy has roots in a close relationship between CIA Director Leon Panetta and Adm. McRaven. In 2009, the two inked a secret agreement setting out rules for joint missions that provided a blueprint for dozens of operations in the Afghan war before the bin Laden raid.

MoreThe Long, Winding Path to Closer CIA and Military Cooperation .The reshuffling of the Obama administration's national-security team will likely reinforce the relationship between the nation's spies and its top military teams. Mr. Panetta is expected to take over the Pentagon this summer armed with a strong understanding of its special-operations capabilities. Gen. David Petraeus, who is expected to become CIA director, made extensive use of special operations while running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This account of the planning of the raid on bin Laden's home in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is based on interviews with more than a dozen administration, intelligence, military and congressional officials.

Officials and experts say the new U.S. approach will likely be used only sparingly. "This is the kind of thing that, in the past, people who watched movies thought was possible, but no one in the government thought was possible," one official said.

May 16 Sen. John Kerry travels to Pakistan to smooth tensions..On Sunday, President Barack Obama said in an interview with the BBC that he would be willing to authorize similar strikes in the future. "Our job is to secure the United States," he said.

Salman Bashir, Pakistan's foreign secretary, said earlier this month in an interview that a repeat of the bin Laden raid could lead to "terrible consequences." Other officials have said Pakistan would curtail intelligence cooperation with the U.S. in the event of another such attack.

A more traditional approach would have been to simply bomb the bin Laden property using stealth aircraft, perhaps in cooperation with Pakistani troops. But from the outset, Mr. Obama decided to cut Pakistan out of the loop.

Top U.S. officials—in particular, Defense Secretary Robert Gates—worried how keeping Pakistan in the dark would affect relations with the country, a close but unstable ally. But mistrust of the Pakistani intelligence services drowned out that fear.

In the end, several hundred people in the U.S. government knew about the raid before it happened. But it didn't leak.

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Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Sen. John Kerry with Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik in May..U.S. officials took extraordinary measures to keep it quiet, often speaking in code to each other. One decided to refer to the operation as "the trip to Atlantic City" to avoid accidentally tipping off colleagues.

In August 2010, after 10 years of a largely fruitless hunt for the man who killed nearly 3,000 Americans, the CIA caught a break when it followed a courier believed to be working with bin Laden to a home in Abbottabad, about 40 miles from Pakistan's capital. After months of observation, the CIA eventually decided that one of the three families living there was most likely bin Laden's.

In December, Mr. Panetta laid out CIA's best intelligence case for Mr. Obama, which pointed to bin Laden's likely, but not certain, presence at the compound. The president asked Mr. Panetta to start devising a plan.

Mr. Panetta turned to Adm. McRaven. It was his visit to CIA headquarters in January, and his quick analysis of the pros and cons, that sealed the two men's partnership, officials say.

Their ties mark a significant historical shift. During the Cold War, there was little interaction between the Pentagon and CIA, as the military focused on planning for a land war with the Soviets and the spy community focused on analysis. That started changing in the 1990s, but only the past few years have the CIA and military begun working particularly closely.

Adm. McRaven assigned one senior special-operations officer—a Navy Captain from SEAL Team 6, one of the top special-forces units—to work on what was known as AC1, for Abbottabad Compound 1. The captain spent every day working with the CIA team in a remote, secure facility on the CIA's campus in Langley, Va.

On the evening of Feb. 25, several black Suburbans pulled up to the front of CIA's Langley headquarters. The meeting was planned after dusk, on a Friday, to reduce the chances anyone would notice. Around a large wooden table in the CIA director's windowless conference room, the Pentagon's chief counterterrorism adviser Michael Vickers, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. James Cartwright and senior CIA officials joined Adm. McRaven and Mr. Panetta. Over sandwiches and sodas, the CIA team walked through their intelligence assessment.

After the Raid in the CompoundWhile President Obama has decided not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden taken after the al Qaeda leader was shot to death by U.S. forces, other photos taken at the compound have been released by Reuters.

View Slideshow.His CompoundPhotos inside and out

View Slideshow

Anjum Naveed/Associated Press

U.S. forces found Osama bin Laden at this compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, about 40 miles outside Islamabad..America's Most WantedSee a timeline about Osama bin Laden.

View Interactive.More photos and interactive graphics .In the middle of the conference table sat a scale model of the compound. Measuring four feet by four feet, it was built by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency based on satellite photos. It was accurate down to every tree.

Analysts told the group they had high confidence that a "high-value" terrorist target was living there. They said there was "a strong probability" it was bin Laden.

The planners reviewed the options they had developed. The first was a bombing strike with a B-2 stealth bomber that would destroy the compound and any tunnels under it. The second was a helicopter raid with U.S. special operations, which immediately evoked visions of "Black Hawk Down," the disastrous Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in which a U.S. helicopter was shot down and 19 U.S. soldiers killed.

The third option was to offer the Pakistanis an opportunity to assist in the raid, perhaps by forming a cordon around the compound to ensure U.S. forces could carry out the operation without obstruction.

Kicking planning into higher gear, the president reviewed these options at a March 14 meeting of the National Security Council. Among his first decisions was to scotch the idea of gathering more intelligence to make sure they had found bin Laden. The potential gain was outweighed by the risk of being exposed.

Mr. Obama also rejected a joint Pakistani operation, officials say. There was no serious consideration of the prospect, said one administration official, given the desire for secrecy.

Weighing on the minds of several officials was the fate of a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, being held in a Lahore jail after having shot two Pakistanis in disputed circumstances. Mr. Panetta, pressing hard for his release, worried Mr. Davis might be killed if the U.S. couldn't spring him before the bin Laden raid.

The B-2 plan had many supporters, particularly among military brass. A bombing would provide certainty that the compound's residents would be killed, and it posed less risk to U.S. personnel. At the time, Mr. Gates, the defense secretary, was skeptical of the intelligence case that bin Laden was at the compound.

At the end of the meeting, officials believed Mr. Obama favored the bombing raid, too. Gen. Cartwright asked two Air Force officers to flesh out that proposal.

They immediately faced a challenge. CIA analysts couldn't tell if there was a tunnel network under the compound. Planners had to presume it existed, which meant the B-2 bombers would have to drop a large amount of ordinance. But a bombing raid of that magnitude would likely kill innocent neighbors in nearby homes.

Another other option would use less powerful ordinance, sparing the neighbors. But any tunnels would be spared, too.

Gen. Cartwright made no recommendations. But the team's PowerPoint presentation, created just after the meeting with the president, laid out plainly the disadvantages of the larger bombing run. It showed another house besides bin Laden's clearly in the blast radius and estimated that up to a dozen civilians could be killed. The ability to recover evidence of bin Laden's death was also minimal—meaning the U.S. wouldn't even be able to prove why they violated Pakistani airspace.

By the time the National Security Council gathered again March 29, the president had grown wary of the bombing-raid option. "He put that plan on ice," a U.S. official said.

Instead, Mr. Obama turned to Adm. McRaven to further develop the idea of a helicopter raid. Adm. McRaven assembled a team drawing from Red Squadron, one of four that make up SEAL Team 6. Red Squadron was coming home from Afghanistan and could be redirected with little notice inside the military.

The team had experience with cross-border operations from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and had language skills that would come in handy as well. The team performed two rehearsals at a location inside the U.S.

Planners ran through the what-ifs: What if bin Laden surrendered? (He likely would be held near Bagram Air Force base, a senior military official said.) What if U.S. forces were discovered by the Pakistanis in the middle of the raid? (A senior U.S. official would call Pakistan's chief military officer and try to talk his way out of it.)

The U.S. was pretty sure it could get in and out without alerting the Pakistanis. Officials say the choppers used in the raid were designed to be less visible to radar and, possibly, to make them quieter.

In addition, because the U.S. helped equip and train Pakistan's military, it had intimate knowledge of the country's capabilities—from the sensitivity of the radar systems deployed along the Afghan border to the level of alert for Pakistani forces in and around Islamabad and Abbottabad.

If Pakistan scrambled F-16s to investigate, the U.S. knew how long it would take the planes to reach the area, officials said. The U.S. supplies F-16s to Pakistan on the condition they are kept at a Pakistani military base with 24/7 U.S. security surveillance, according to diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

On April 11, Mr. Panetta had a high-stakes meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. Ties between the U.S. and Pakistan were already chilly, partly due to the spat over Mr. Davis, the CIA contractor jailed in Lahore. But Mr. Davis had since been freed, and the high-profile event at Langley was intended to improve ties between the nations.

At the event, Gen. Pasha asked Mr. Panetta to be more forthcoming about what his agency was doing inside Pakistan. Gen. Pasha also voiced frustration that the CIA was operating in his country behind his back—not knowing, of course, of the planning for the bin Laden attack.

Mr. Pasha has said the meeting involved a shouting match; American officials say that didn't happen. Mr. Panetta promised to review Gen. Pasha's concerns, according to U.S. officials. His goal was to try to improve ties so the bin Laden takedown didn't occur when relations were at rock bottom.

When the National Security Council met again eight days later. Mr. Obama gave a provisional go-ahead for the helicopter raid. But he worried the plan for managing the Pakistanis was too flimsy.

The U.S. had little faith that, if U.S. forces were captured by the Pakistanis, they would be easily returned home. Given how difficult it had been to resolve the case of Mr. Davis—which took more than two months of heated negotiations—one U.S. official said: "How could we get them to uphold an incursion 128 miles into their airspace?"

Mr. Obama directed Adm. McRaven to develop a stronger U.S. escape plan. The team would be equipped to fight its way out and would have two helicopters on stand-by in case of an emergency.

On April 28, a few days before the attack on bin Laden's compound, Mr. Obama held a public event in the East Room of the White House to unveil his new national-security team. From there, Messrs. Obama and Panetta went to the Situation Room, where Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained the final plan to the National Security Council.

Only at that meeting did Mr. Gates come around to fully endorsing the operation, because of his skepticism of the intelligence indicating bin Laden was there.

Mr. Obama told his advisers he wanted to speak directly with Adm. McRaven before the raid was launched. The admiral was in Afghanistan preparing his strike team.

That call took place on Saturday afternoon, Washington time, over a secure phone line. Mr. Obama asked Adm. McRaven for an update on final preparations. Mr. Obama also asked the admiral if had learned anything since arriving in Afghanistan that caused him to alter his confidence in the mission.

Adm. McRaven told Mr. Obama the team was ready, and that his assessment remained unchanged.

The U.S. released a trove of documents on Thursday recovered from Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan a year ago, which show that al-Qaida’s leaders were deeply divided over how to manage a group of worldwide affiliates that lacked discipline or willingness to take direction, The Washington Post reports.

(RELATED: Text of the 17 bin Laden Documents)

A 2010 letter from bin Laden to one of his top deputies, for example, shows concern over “increased mistakes” by “brothers” in countries including Iraq and Yemen, the Post reported.

The documents also show bin Laden was frustrated with the groups’ attacks on fellow Muslims, bad media operations and a lack of focus on attacking the United States and the West.

(RELATED: Obama Released More Detail on bin Laden Raid)

The documents were released by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point and date from September 2006 to April 2011.

Thanks BD. The writings of this character help to tell a historic story.

The death of bin Laden was important and symbolic, but it was the death of his ability to operate freely and command effectively a worldwide terror group that was crucial.

"bin Laden was frustrated with the groups’ attacks on fellow Muslims"

This was a confused man.

IIRC the leaders were laughing in their video at the fate of the suicide volunteers who did not know their ending as they prepared for their mission. A suicide bomber IS an attack on a fellow Muslim no matter how many infidels it kills. I wonder how many Muslims died in his attacks and their aftermath with the wars he intentionally set off:-----"...28 Muslims who died in the twin towers of the World Trade Center, in addition to three Muslims who were among the passengers on two hijacked planes; one of them crashed on a Pennsylvania field before it reached its target, and the second one hit the Pentagon. The Muslims victims in the 9/11 attacks were as follows: six from Pakistan, six from Bangladesh, four from Guiana, two from Sri Lanka, two from Gambia, two from Ivory Coast, and 1 from Yemen, one from Iran, one from Ethiopia, one from Turkey, one from Trinidad and Tobago, one from Burma, one from Albania, one from Greece and one from India, representing 1.07 percent of the total number of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, which is the same percentage of Muslims in the United States."http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/09/11/166286.html----In the aftermath of 'bin Laden Dead' it would be nice if the regret of attacks against fellow Muslims was what a billion Muslims take forward from this global nightmare. Setting off 'necessary' wars in Muslim lands is not consistent with regretting attacks against fellow Muslims. Of course he meant Muslim on Muslim attacks, but the result of his Muslim on 'infidel' attacks was the same.

One year removed from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, hundreds of hours of programing and print pages are being devoted to to telling us what it all means. In this week’s issue of TIME, journalist Peter Bergen and historian Graham Allison walk us through the events that led up to Navy SEALs storming bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on a moonless night one year ago.

But to truly understand what the raid means in the study of special operations, you have to go back much further, past Operations Eagle Claw, the disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue hostages from the American Embassy in Tehran, to Operation Thunderbolt. In July 1976, Israeli commandos stormed the airport at Entebbe, Uganda and rescued 105 hostages held by pro-Palestinian hijackers (the animation on this video is second rate, but it gives a good overview of the raid).

But wait a minute. What does a 36-year-old Israeli commando raid have to do with killing Osama bin Laden?

There was a special on the military station this weekend on seal team six. I believe it was a replay. In any case the seals who came up with the six idea had their first operation in Iran in 1980. They learned from the failure. Jimmy Carter had the guts to try the operation though he was made the laughing stock by the Repubs for it's failure. This time around Brock man looks like the genius. The only geniuses were the Seals IMHO:

CCP, I agree except that I don't remember if Republicans made big on that operational failure or if people mostly just took that as having had enough with a policy of dealing with the world from a position of weakness. To me it was not that it failed, but that the failure was a symbol of our weakness.

The alternative side (Reagan) was saying we will arm and grow in order to deal with our adversaries, including those a lot stronger than Iran, from a position of strength.----------------------------

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Eric Holder's predecessor: "That is a half-truth peculiarly designed to irritate anybody who knows the other half."

"Yes, the CIA knew about the name before it was disclosed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. However, that information lay unexploited because it came from an insignificant source. When it came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, after he was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, they followed it up and found that this guy was still active. They then went back to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who by then had his wits about him, and asked him again about this guy, and he said, "Oh, he's been out of it for some time." That was a lie. They knew it was a lie. And because he had lied about it, that enhanced even more the significance of the information. So the information didn't become significant until they learned about it from him and its significance was increased by the fact that he lied about it. They learned about it after enhanced interrogation techniques."

"CCP, I agree except that I don't remember if Republicans made big on that operational failure or if people mostly just took that as having had enough with a policy of dealing with the world from a position of weakness. To me it was not that it failed, but that the failure was a symbol of our weakness."

Good point. Your probably more accurately depicting it then I did in retrospect.

As for you points about the value of "enhanced" interrogation I agree with that as well. We will never get the libs to admit it that.

There is no rational logic to the concept that water boarding three people with no permanent harm is some such incredible crime against humanity yet sending robots (drones) out to assasinate alleged combatants/enemies and kill them like that is humane and ethically ok. Don't get me wrong - I am not against either - just the illogic of one is so totallly outrageous and immoral and the other is morrally justified and within international law.

We never really know who is killed from these drones. They are all faceless and labelled enemy combatants by the military. Many could be innocent farmers or goat herders for all we know.

I wonder what the outrage would be if W was still ordering all these drones murders vs a Democrat Prez?

CCP: "There is no rational logic to the concept that water boarding three people with no permanent harm is some such incredible crime against humanity yet sending robots (drones) out to assasinate alleged combatants/enemies and kill them like that is humane and ethically ok. Don't get me wrong - I am not against either - just the illogic of one is so totallly outrageous and immoral and the other is morrally justified and within international law."..."I wonder what the outrage would be if W was still ordering all these drones ..."

This is really well put. I'm not for torture but torture to the guy who beheaded WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl in his bare hands on camera would be to gouge out his eyeballs and chop off his limbs one by one, not sleep deprivation or water tricks. He is fully intact and ready to be belligerent in the courtroom of his fair trial.

Also as you say, can you imagine the uproar from the left if the drone hits were still Bush's! Those drone attacks escalated under Obama. Assuming we are acting on good intelligence, the policy of continuing those cross border hits was a far more controversial and courageous decision (IMHO) by a peace prize winning President than authorizing a one-time, high-profile hit on Osama, which appeared to be quite a no brainer.